Stephen Gates

Dear Yahoo – what a difference an ‘m’ can make

sdgates2466 — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 17:55:00 +0000

Just a quick observation on the recent Yahoo home page redesign. I have been trying it out since it launched and the one thing I hate more than anything has nothing to do with the design but everything to do with the URL. When you go to the site it is no longer www.yahoo.com but instead m.www.yahoo.com. The addition of that ‘m’ to the URL drives me crazy and keeps me away from the site because it screws me up every time I go to their site and then type in any other url. So this is one of those cases where breaking user expectation creates a negative experience that overrules everything about the design and experience to the point where people will start to avoid your site over something as small as a single letter.

Burger King site re-design does it your way

sdgates2466 — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:15:00 +0000

Crispin Porter has just launched the re-design of Burger King’s web site BK.com. The re-design clearly tries to pay off the company tag line of ‘have it your way’ with site navigation that are three large sliders marked Fun, Food and King. You customize the content that is displayed by moving these sliders to have the content ‘your way’. The content is a mix of offers, company info and what feels like a Crispin Porter advertising shine with too many old campaigns dating back to Subservient Chicken.

I like the fact that the design is simple and focused on supporting the brand. I have mixed feelings about the overall experience because on the one hand the sliders create a hunt and peck feeling for me and I’m not sure if I am missing content I would have liked to have seen. I know the flip side of that is by creating that sense you are creating engagement and will have users spending time on a type of site they would normally not spend much time with.

Zappos RFP process comes untied

sdgates2466 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:20:00 +0000

If you have ever dealt with Zappos.com you know they have great customer service with it seems like that treatment may not extend to their business partners. They recently launched an agency review which quickly drew tremendous interest since the brand has shown a willingness to embrace new ideas and digital media. By the end of the process they had open up the review to more than 100 agencies. If you have ever been involved in an RFP process you know how insane that number is handling more than 4 or 5 can be an all consuming process.

One of the agencies that submitted an RFP was Ignited who did something smart with their submission. They used Google Analytics to calculated that Zappos viewed only five pages of its 25-page submission with an average page-view time of 14 seconds. Beyond that it showed that they looked at pages like “What’s a campaign by another agency that you admire?” and not a testimonial from one of the agency’s current clients.

Mr. Wolfsohn made a good point in his blog by saying “The playing field is about to get a bit more level. If we reply to any RFPs in the future, we’ll be letting the prospective clients know that our submission will be online and that we’ll be measuring how much time is spent reviewing it. And we encourage other shops to do the same. If agencies are going to spend weeks preparing their response, the least any client can do is commit 30 minutes to look at it.”

I speak for someone who used to do a tremendous amount of new business work that I love this idea so that all the time and love that is invested into that work actually gets it’s day in the sun and agencies aren’t just treated like clearing houses and filters to help executives form opinions they can’t create on their own.

Yahoo! adds new new advertising, I mean, consumer functionality

sdgates2466 — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 01:18:00 +0000

Today Yahoo! put their new home page design in to beta by making it available to the public. The only real change seems to be the addition of a ‘my favorites’ column that now appears on the left hand side of the page. It functions like Apple Safari’s top sites where you can you can add preset Yahoo! sites and categories or add your own sites. It is an overhaul of the block that used to appear on the right side of the page that would slide open to reveal updates of Yahoo! content like mail. Once this new version is set up you can then scroll down the list of site to see news, updates and summaries of what is new on the selected sites. It sounds like an interesting idea but the execution disappointing as the information display is really primitive often looking like nothing more than an early RSS reader. It seems like the main reason for developing the update is the box ad unit now appears in each panel so they can then increase their ad impressions. MI can only hope they will refine and improve it throughout the beta because as it is there isn’t much to write home about.

Cartier Graffiti Taxonomy

sdgates2466 — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:01:00 +0000

Evan Roth has unveiled a very cool new online exploration of graffiti tags as an art form titled “Born in the Streets,” for the new exhibit at the Fondation Cartier in Paris. He photographed more than 2,400 graffiti tags from April 24 to April 28, 2009 from each of Paris’s 20 districts and then created a catalog of the individual letters in the tags.

The site then puts that tags front and center as they serve as art and interface. They are organized into rows with each row grouping around a certain letter. You can then drill into that row to explore the grouping letter. Clicking on one of the letters will then pull up the associated photos that the letter was pulled from. Moving between the rows, letters and photos creates interesting experience and relationship between the different elements. Also breaking the tags into their individual letters creates a fascinating study in urban typography and lets you looks at the tags in new ways.

OK GO is reincarnated as HP printers

sdgates2466 — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:08:00 +0000

Recent Kingston University design graduates Tom Wrigglesworth and Matt Robinson took 8 ink jet printers and channeled the energy and viral success of the band OK GO to create this award-winning student video. The video was created in response to D&AD Student Awards brief set by Hewlett Packard asked students to “Present an idea which promotes HP Workstations ability to bring to life anything the creative mind can conceive”. The simplicity and success of the concept comes from that fact that product and creativity are the only hero’s of the video. Having owned a printer like this in the past I now want to how many ink cartridges it took to make it.

If a good interface is hidden in the site and no sees it how does it make a difference?

sdgates2466 — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:02:00 +0000

I’m a car guy. I love to drive a great car and I love a great car design. The new Chevy Camero intrigued me in that ‘it’s a cool design but still won’t buy an American car’ kind of way and so I checked out the site. I was in the photo gallery and found one of those things about the site that is like the American car industry itself – a nice design idea badly merchandised and probably lost on most everyone. In this case you go to the photo gallery and the obvious move would be to go to the ‘view all photos’ tab at the bottom of the page that reveals the standard long line of tiny thumbnails that you can randomly click across to reveal the true content of the photo that looked like nothing but an amorphous blog in the thumbnail. After you select the previously mentioned amorphous blog the main photo changes along with two smaller photos on the right hand side. If you are paying attention you will realize that two smaller photos are actually the photos directly before and after the large photo on the left hand side. If you are really, really paying attention and curious to rollover those smaller photos you will find that they are also navigation that lets you move from photo to photo without the need for the standard interface at the bottom of the page. It’s a really nice elegant solution to this kind of content and surprisingly something I had never seen before. That being said my reaction to the good execution is quickly drowned by the anger generated from the realization that most people will never know it is there. If they just would have taken the time to develop the short term memory loss needed to see that what they have created is too much design and not enough usability. So all of your designers out there please take the time to look at your work with fresh eyes or show it to your mom, your dog or whoever you need to be able to see if your solution is as genius in the real world as you think it is in your head.

myspace – not friendly any more

sdgates2466 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:41:00 +0000

I noticed today that flagging social media pioneer MySpace.com has tweaked their branding to remove the “.com” and “a place for friends” from their logo. The site ha been under siege from all angles. They have had huge employee layoffs that Fast Company called “the largest de-friending in its history” laying off 30% of its U.S. workforce and two-thirds of its international employees a week later. They have seen Facebook surpass them in global unique visitors on top of declining marketing spends and millions of pissed off users. I will once again repeat my thought of only once post ago and say that you are not going to to be able to re-invent your business by re-inventing your logo.

Pizza the Hut isn’t just in Spaceballs anymore

sdgates2466 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:35:00 +0000

Pizza Hut has decided to follow KFC in the branding tactic that says people would buy more from you if they could just say your name faster. So as Kentucky Fried Chicken went to KFC, Pizza Hut has now become The Hut. You read that right – they have re branded their company to match the villain in Spaceballs! Not to mention there doesn’t seem to be an accompanying plan on how they are going to effect that trend of people choosing to dine at home and avoid ‘junk’ foods to save money. This trend of thinking you can improve your business with a new logo instead of new ideas is getting really, really old.

Crispin Porter site re-design goes into beta

sdgates2466 — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:27:00 +0000

Crispin Porter + Bogusky has finally found some time to work on their agency web site which has been in dire need of an update for a long time. The new site has a visual design so simple it doesn’t even play into the experience with tabbed main navigation that puts the focus squarely on the content displayed there. The main navigation is a series of tabs made up of the agency and their clients. As you move from tab to tab the content made up of associated work, news and chatter from Twitter and Blogs is shown. I think this is the most interesting under the client tabs as it exposes what the real world is saying about the brands and the work both good and bad. I think it could even better if they had a way to participate in the conversation that is going about them so it was more than a one way dialogue but it is a good start. I wish clients would open themselves up to this type of social media conversation and admit that it is going on, good and bad, wether they want to be a part of it or not.